Safest Year on Record for Commercial Passenger Air Travel

03 January, 2018

Five of the fatal accidents involved cargo flights and five passenger flights. In comparison to these figures, 2016 was a year which witnessed a total of 16 accidents and 303 deaths among all airliners.

No major airline crashed a plane, the To70 agency said in its annual report, also published Monday.

According to To70, the announcement of the "safest" year comes in the background of an unprecedented increase in civilian flights around the world. In 2017, just 13 people died in airplane crashes, and even then exclusively on small turbo-prop aircrafts, Dutch aviation consultancy To70 found.

[1] Statistics are based on all worldwide fatal commercial aircraft accidents (passenger and cargo flights) involving civil aircraft of which the basic model has been certified for carrying 14 or more passengers. The 2017 numbers were "still the lowest numbers in modern aviation history", according to Harro Ranter, the chief executive for ASN.

Air New Zealand has recently changed its policy to require any electronic devices with lithium-ion batteries to be held in carry-on luggage.

In praising his own efforts on aviation safety, Trump said there were no aviation accident-related deaths in the U.S. past year.

The low number of accidents comes as no surprise, according to ASN President Harro Ranter: "Since 1997 the average number of airliner accidents has shown a steady and persistent decline, for a great deal thanks to the continuing safety-driven efforts by global aviation organisations such as ICAO, IATA, Flight Safety Foundation and the aviation industry".

His comments come after Trump on Tuesday morning tweeted: "Since taking office I have been very strict on Commercial Aviation".

The calculations of both sources do not include crashes with military planes or helicopters.

US President Donald Trump boards Air Force One in West Palm Beach, Florida with First Lady Melania Trump and son Barron Trump en route to Washington. Four days later, in West Virginia, two people were killed in another accident.

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